You can't go home again

After getting the following bulletin from The Plastic Constellations on MySpace, I knew I couldn't resist:

Friendthrens-

The four of us in TPC went to high school together, back in the proverbial day. Did you know this? Odds are yes since it seems to be mentioned fairly frequently in press coverage of our dumb band. Did you know that this aforementioned high school was none other than Hopkins High School (aka Tha 270, as in "Independent School District #270) in Hopkins, MN, a small industrial suburb ten minutes to the west of Minneapolis?

It's true.

Since we're at the "let's play a bunch of crazy little shows for fun while we finish writing a new record" stage of 2007, we've decided to book a show at a Hopkins mainstay -- Decoy's on Mainstreet -- just like, cause, it'll be crazy fun. If you've ever been there, you know that the bands who usually play there are of the bar band-cover jams-keyboard solo-long hair variety.

On this Saturday, April 28th, we will be ripping this venue a new asshole along with our rapper friends (and also Hopkins High School graduates) Sims and Mictlan from Doomtree. Here is the stats:

Saturday, April 28th
9:30 PM till close
Decoy's in Hopkins, MN
1022 Mainstreet (corner of 11th and Main)
The Plastic Constellations
Sims and Mictlan from Doomtree
$5 - 21+

A show this special deserves a special approach. We'll be playing mutliple sets, covers, tracks from our entire catalog (including a bunch of new jams), invoking audience participation -- you know, all the ridiculous stuff that a bar band normally does. Except it will be us, TPC, inciting the riotus good times and not Wicked Slammerz or whatever other bands normally play there.

We think that you should come to this. For reals. Hopefully we'll see you there.

Love and Jason Kubel,
TPC

I don't spend a lot of time in the West Metro. All right, I don't spend any time in the West Metro, so a set of MapQuest directions and one Friends Like These EP later, I parked on Main Street right out in front of Decoy's last night around 10:30 p.m. Decoy's is pretty much what you'd expect from a suburban bar-- long sightlines, tables strewn around the area on different levels, a bevy of televsions (half tuned to the Devils/Senators game, half to the Rockets/Jazz game), a lot of locals and a whole lot of smoke. Right, I forgot about smoking in bars.

The stage is set on an angle in the northeast corner of the room (at least, I think it's northeast-- the 'burbs have a way of messing with my internal compass), rising all of six inches from the bar floor and adorned with neon beer signs featuring guitars. I run into Jordan Roske (bassist for TPC), and we chat about the upcoming set and how things have been going. TPC have been at work composing a follow-up LP to last year's Crusades, and apparently, they've got six songs done, all of which they'll be playing tonight. Recording's supposed to start in August. Just a heads up.

I grab a Sam Adams and make like Magellan around the bar, running into Doomtree rapper Sims in the back. He's sporting winter hair, which for him means hair, and it's a little unnerving. But not as unnerving as this whole thing seems for him. Sims went to high school in Hopkins, like TPC and several other members of Doomtree, and he has that glazed/manic look in his eye that I imagine I have in those dreams where you're wearing pajamas (or less) in the middle of second period math class. I empathize, man. I was back in Williamstown not all that long ago, and experienced a truly odd mix of emotions upon seeing people I had gone to high school with. Sort of an initial reaction of shock and horror that they're still in that tiny-assed town all these years later immediately followed by scolding myself at feeling superior. So I moved; so what? It's perhaps a little more jarring for the assembled Minneapolitans tonight since it seems like it shouldn't be that tough to achieve escape velocity from Hopkins when the Twin Cities are just up the road. I don't know much about Hopkins, though-- I just know Main Street seems sleepy as shit on a Saturday night.

Cecil Otter comes up and gives me a warm greeting, the warmest I think I've ever gotten from him, perhaps a reflection of the above. People who've come out from the Cities are kind of like little liferafts for the graduates of Hopkins High, it seems. Cecil starts his set by saying, "Hi, I'm Kyle and I went to Hopkins." He spends the whole set on the floor in front of the stage, drawling his lyrics out against the booming backdrop of cuts provided by Paper Tiger, and the effect is, well, odd, although not in the way that the performers seem to think it is. Cecil Otter's stage persona is a marked contrast to that of Sims or P.O.S. or really most of the whole rest of Doomtree, who seem to feed off each other, moving to create more motion. Sims tends to prowl the stage, Mictlan kind of stalks, but Cecil just kind of lounges. Sometimes it seems like he belongs more to the Rat Pack than Doomtree, like he should be holding a martini and telling dry jokes, but tonight the music's so big and his presence so bracing in this space that he just seems huge and absolutely in command, but not in a dominating kind of way. It seems like effortless aplomb.

When he gives way to Sims and Mictlan, things get considerably more rambunctious. Mictlan mostly sticks to saying things with his rhymes, but Sims is clearly a little unhinged by the whole thing, telling people that a real rock band is coming up real soon, and relishing the prospect of people in the back coming up to him after the set and giving him shit. It's not so much that the crowd isn't into it, because a throng of about 40 people have crowded around the front of the stage; it's more that they just chatter real loudly through everything, even the people up front. In a way, it's probably harder than dealing with either reprobation or approbation. The crowd isn't wicked into it, but it's not like they hate them-- they're mostly just not paying attention. As a performer, pretty much a fate worse than death.

Paper Tiger keeps it going between Sims/Mictlan and TPC, cueing up "Be Easy" by Ghostface Killah and following it immediately with a tantalizing slice of "Luccini" by Camp Lo. That's the good shit, but again, nobody's really giving notice.



TPC hits the stage, and the crowd seems to warm a little more to the idea of a real band, but it's still a bar-band bar. Really, though, it's a grand and kind of hilarious experiment that peels back all kinds of things about being a band that your average gig doesn't get at. For everybody playing tonight, their music is unmistakably theirs-- they've forged these sounds out of their influences, beginning at some derivative sound and ending up where they are now. Which is not to say that they've reached their destination and are fully-formed-- this isn't like Bruce Springsteen coming back to play a bar in Asbury Park or something, but that's what makes it particularly deliciously meta, really. The bands who usually play here are cover bands, playing someone else's music to people who want to hear somebody else's music. In a lot of ways, the music that bands are usually playing at Decoy's is further removed from what Doomtree and TPC play than other forms of original art are. What Doomtree and TPC are doing is creating themselves through creative expression. It's more than just saying, "This is who I am"; it's the metaphorical fashioning of themselves through the act of creation. It's really profoundly artistic in a really beautiful way. And most of the people here couldn't seem to care less.

Whatever, though. In keeping with my previous post about authenticity, I want to clarify that I'm not in any way saying original music is more "real" than that made by a cover band. They're both engaged in the kind of sleight of hand that's necessary for performance. I'm not saying, I'm just saying.

TPC are willing to play the game, though, and before their set break ("Because that's what bar bands do," says singer Jeff Allen) they play a cover of Journey's "Separate Ways." It's kind of funny, and it kind of rocks, but frankly, the smoke's starting to get to me. My eyes are starting to burn a bit, plus I'm coming down with a cold, so I head out, away from Decoy's and Hopkins and back to the welcoming embrace of Saint Paul.